Ok, so I'm a noob, not a clueless n00b, but a n00b and I have a question :P .

Alright, So I've been looking around the forums and the website and such and I came up with these few questions from shreds of facts here and there.

1. I know Litestep is under developement, and you advise stuff like if you can't take crashes then stick with good ole windows and stuff; but how stable IS litestep in you people's actual experiance? How many crashes do you get a week? (preferably on a win 98se box, because that's what I am hoping to convert)

2. I don't mind a crash every once in a while (lol I do use windows after all, I've gotten used to it :P ) but what exactly are we talking about here, seriouseness wise? Just something a re-boot and a scan-disk will fix, or something more along the lines of editing text files from a command line or losing data and having to "start from scratch"?

3. Some people have said litestep might not work well on windows 98(se?) if it's using a newer theme. And, I have heard that some of themes cause problems. So what exactly, in your opinion is the best, most stable theme to get?

4. Is there some simple way to switch between the standard windows shell and litestep? maybe at the execution of a file and a reboot? Or is that a pipe dream?

5. What is the most catastrophic thing that could happen? (within reason ofcourse :) )

6. all my windows programs will still work right? Or atleast most I wager? And what about my anti-virus/antispyware/firewall software (Avast! anti-virus, Sygate Firewall, Spyware Doctor)? Go or no go?

Thnx in advance for taking the time to answer!

1) On XP I haven't had LS crash in 3 years
3) Its not about stable themes. Its about not using alphatransparency for things.
4) Of course
5) PC catches fire and burns your house to the ground?
6) Mostly...some older apps weren't written to work with explorer not being the shell. Others require explorer running to install. You'll know it when you see it.

Ah, ok thnx DeViLbOi.

As for answer 4, how exactly do I do that? Oh, and can alpha transparency be turned off in a setting somewhere or is it coded into each theme?

4. Omars installer puts some shortcuts on your destkop

and alphatransparency is usually coded into the theme, sometimes there might be some clever IF 9x stuff, but recently themers have not been bothering.

1. The core is exceptionally stable. Some modules crash when you do the wrong thing, or change too much. For using a theme, it should be very stable. Not as much when developing one.
2. Task manager->new task->start LS, or kill it if it is hogging the CPU and locked up. Not serious at all. Do NOT end the process tree when you do this, though, because that will kill most apps started from LS (like everything in your systray).
5. No shell, must use task manager to run a shortcut to set the shell back.
6. Except for some video playback issues (black screen or frozen frame playing back some video formats), yes. If you run into any, search here.

1. Cerbie has put it very well I believe. Be aware you might run into buggy modules once in a while.

2. Reboot or other way to start LS back up will do the trick.

3. To my knwoledge, only things like alpha transparency and other GUI stuff are 2k/xp only. Worst that will happen AFAIK is that you won't get the eye candy. Shouldn't cause any serious problems I believe.

4. Omar's installer come with a nifty utility called setshell.exe that will change the shell to an executable of your choice, whether it be explorer, ls, or whatever. Alternatively, changing the shell in win9x/me is very simple and requires only editing of 1 line in some system txt file which I don't remeber right now :o sys.ini I believe? Somebody correct me here please

5. On win9x/me, if no shell is set or it is set to an invalid exe, you'll get a scary error in dos mode when booting. Something with you having to reinstall windows. Don't worry though, you'll just have to manually edit in command line the file I mentioned above.

6. I doubt you would run into much, if any, problems.